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Update: We're glad Dragon's Dogma 2 is out soon, because this ongoing debate over the game's PS5 frame rate is already out of control. Yesterday, a bunch of fresh previews for the action RPG dropped — and just about every single one of them gushed over how good the game is shaping up to be. Some even went as far to call it a guaranteed Game of the Year contender.
However, for many, there's a clear sticking point hiding amid all the praise — and that's the uncapped frame rate. As outlined in the original article below, IGN went ahead and actually analysed the frame rate during their demo — and it averaged at around 31 frames-per-second. Which, needless to say, isn't great for a current-gen action game.
The panic didn't stop there, though. Others who played this preview build also noted just how choppy the frame rate was. Twitch streamer Oroboro told his audience (as posted on Reddit) that the frame rate was "really bad, really, really bad", and that it was definitely not a stable 30fps. However, much like IGN, he was informed by Capcom that the frame rate will be better in the finished release.
But this is where things get a bit confusing. There are other previews out there — multiple, in fact — that clearly highlight a much smoother frame rate. Some, like Twitch streamer Prod, state that the preview build was running at around 60fps, but with some dips during busy combat scenarios. RPGFan also say that the game "ran smoothly" during their time with it.
So what's going on here? Well, it could be a number of things. It's possible that the uncapped frame rate really does fluctuate to a crazy degree — but if that is the case, you would expect more of the previews to bring it up. It's even possible that the fault lies with Capcom in that the preview build itself may have had technical issues. Could something like prolonged play over multiple preview sessions cause the frame rate to decay, while resetting the PS5 put it right? We just don't know.
As if it wasn't already obvious, we're going to need to play Dragon's Dogma 2 for ourselves before jumping to any conclusions.
Original Story: Fresh previews for Dragon's Dogma 2 are dropping, and you know what that means! Yep, it's once again time to discuss the game's frame rate, which has been a hot topic over the last couple of months. Previously, director Hideaki Itsuno confirmed that the game would feature an uncapped frame rate — meaning that it won't be capped at 30 frames-per-second.
However, as many were quick to point out, the problem with an uncapped frame rate is that it can fluctuate, resulting in a potentially choppy experience.
And so here we are, with IGN putting said frame rate to the test in a new video. Based on what IGN played, Dragon's Dogma 2 averages 31fps on PS5, complete with ups and downs depending on how busy things get. So, the frame rate is uncapped — but it's barely approaching that hallowed 60fps.
It needs to be noted, though, that this isn't the final build — something that Capcom was apparently eager to stress. IGN's testing is based on a preview version of the action RPG.
With that in mind, we're crossing our fingers that Dragon's Dogma 2 will at least offer your standard graphical options on Sony's current-gen console. While certainly not ideal for a game that's heavy on action, 30fps isn't the end of the world — but an unstable 30fps can be a real kicker.
What do you make of this? Are you banking on the finished game performing better? Pray for improved performance in the comments section below.
[source youtube.com]
Comments 93
Just give me a stable frame rate, 30 or 60. I do not care for having an uncapped frame rate.
Would prefer a stable frame rate, even at 30, but to be honest I'm just glad they made the game. Ill suffer through the Dips vs having no game at all.
Yikes that's the avg?! Jesus
Removed - trolling/baiting
Still waiting for the day I can tell the difference to be honest
It's kind of surprising to see a Capcom game that is running into trouble like this. Up until now the RE engine (I'm assuming that's what DD2 is running on) has hit 60 pretty consistently. I know its open world but still, just a bit surprised is all.
Sadly, that's kind of a deal breaker for me, at least until a potential PS5 Pro upgrade patch is released. 30fps is still the reason I never got around to playing the original or Dark Arisen, just can't do it anymore.
Removed - trolling/baiting
@Porco you have a valid point It's not Like this title is pushing any visual or technical boundaries by any stretch. This should be a stable 30 at the very least.
@TrickyDicky99 yeah it's just the sacrifice the devs are willing to make to make other areas of the game better. Games are still power hungry, conforming to 60 (or even lol 120) FPS would push back other areas by several years. Maybe one day hardware will be so powerful and affordable it won't matter any more but we are clearly not there yet.
No 60fps = No buy
The game looks like a Ps4 game at best, so it isn't pushing the console. I see absolutely no reason this can't be a stable 60fps game.
@TrickyDicky99 Nope because the scope and detail of a Rockstar game is another level, same as Red Dead 2. Visually Dragons Dogma 2 doesn't look so amazing to me it's mind blowing and making me think "wow this can barely hit a solid 30 fps" It looks no better than Horizon and Rebirth gives a pretty solid 30 and that has a pretty decent sized map. Could be limitations in the engine perhaps but it's odd there isn't a performance mode. I wonder what will happen with the new Monster Hunter? World was a very good looking game and the new one is open world, with this struggling to keep 30fps that will be slide show city.
Well, guess I'm getting Rise of the Ronin in March. I'll play DD2 on the PC when it's cheap.
The game looks pretty bad in the graphics department, so the fact that it can't have a locked 60fps is inexcusable. Capcom were just incompetent here, the PS5 is good enough.
Ffs, why are capcom so dead set against locking the framerate? What is wrong with them? Even if the game is great i can't pick it up now as it'll just play so horribly.
The word 'uncapped' is doing some pretty heavy lifting here.
Still getting it day one, but this might motivate me to start with Rise of the Ronin until Capcom gets this sorted out.
@TrickyDicky99
But this game (in my opinion) isn't pushing the PS5 in any possible way, it looks like a PS4 game and doesn't do anything to innovate open world design or has anything i can immediately think to warrant the tax on hardware. I would've said destruction tech on the CPU but even that doesn't look like anything special.
Hopefully the retail version will have a performance mode with a lower resolution/preset for textures etc.
The PS5 Pro isn't something needed desperately because the hardware hasn't even begun to be pushed by anything.
No game has even came close to peak visuals since Horizon FW and Cyberpunk 2077 apart from maybe FF16.
It's just general knowledge that cross generation development hasn't even begun to test the waters of what this hardware can do and another SKU will only complicate things further.
A pro model isn't something desperately needed, with the last generation it made sense with the jump to 4K displays/HDR but this time I can't see the reasoning beyond "more frames", especially since any game going forward will have to run on the base PS5 anyway so won't push the technology in any meaningful way.
I'm glad it's uncapped, because there won't be a PS5 Pro patch needed
I'm still surprised to see the RE engine struggle like this; especially when, as others have noted, it doesn't look like it's exactly pushing the PS5 to its limits; what with Forbidden West etc being able to run very smoothly.
A ps4 looking game running bad on ps5 isn’t good and a pro isn’t gonna help at all. if some of theses developers doesn’t want to optimize they’re games properly for the vanilla ps5 console with 60 million sales. what would make you think they gonna try to optimize they’re games properly for a console that would probably sell like 2 or 3 million at launch and maybe sell 10 million lifetime.
Looks like the PS5 has finally reached its limit.
@guestwork have you seen this game graphically lol.
I want the game but I need either stable 60 or at least stable 30! I wonder why Capcom has had trouble with this game's performance when it doesn't look even remotely close graphically to Village or RE4 and they killed it with those games.
I think the PS5 Pro is going to end up being a mandatory purchase now...
Performance mode save us lol
Either 30 or 60. It must be stable. This game is not visually impressive so no excuses.
@Juanalf Scenes in Village and RE4 are pretty small size and usually in doors. However, DD2 is an open world game and maybe Capcom can not handle it.
You're better off using the 30 fps cap than that. This is a PS5 pro game for me and hopefully will hit 60. Cant play these big worlds in 30 any more. There's so much out anyways.
Sounding like I may just wait to play this on PS5 Pro.
No need for a PS5 Pro, or a PS6 or a PS7. Looking at the game, we just need people skilled enough in modern computer graphics to do some optimization. That, together with Rise of the Ronin, these days we are clearly back to a pre-gen console quality.
PS5 Pro here we go!
@SolarSailor The rumored specs of PS5 Pro wouldn’t be good enough to make this mess of a framerate (with regular dips below 30 fps, at least in this beta) a stable 60 fps.
@Nowings Bigger scale doesn’t always mean higher demands. A simple building in RE4 seems to have a higher fidelity than on of those mountains in DD2.
PC version it is then and they really should cap it to 30fps on PS5
@TrickyDicky99
Worse still many people think that the "full PS5 potential hasn't been tapped into yet".
@TrickyDicky99 I think it's more a case of not optimising performance.
@Jay767 Amen. It's their way to make lazy games and cut costs passing the cost of development to players who always need to buy new hardware.
Surely they'll offer a toggle to cap the framerate in the final build? That would be such a strange thing to leave out.
Personally I'd like to see a 60 fps mode for every single current-gen game, but a locked 30 should really be the absolute minimum expectation. Or a quasi-locked one; sporadic, slight dips aren't the end of the world.
@ZhuckelDror
Ofcourse it hasn't. Just look at the difference between first- and second-gen ps4 games and last-gen ps4 games. The difference is massive.
Every PS console, the games that were made near the end of it's cycle looked way better than the ones from the first or middle part of it's cycle.
Especially with this game, it just looks like it isn't optimized very well. They are running on a modified engine from 2014 that wasn't even designed for open world games in the first place.
Does development on games feel laY to anyone of recent years? I mean PS5 is quite a powerful machine but we keep getting these articles on games not being able to to do this and that it's kinda crazy
Not sure why this has become a PS5 Pro conversation. This is entirely down to the devs not wanting to invest the time and resources in to creating a 60 fps mode for console. It has nothing to do with hardware, there are far more demanding games that have demonstrated that already. It's just poorly optimised, evidenced by the fact that they didn't even bother to ensure a stable locked 30.
@savarunl
>first- and second-gen ps4 games and last-gen ps4 games
What's that?
I'd rather they just cap it at 30fps
@thefourfoldroot1 you can't tell the difference between 30 and 60 fps??? Or can't tell the difference between capped and un capped 30 as their is quite the difference in both cases.
Capcom keep doing this, the uncapped framerate thing. RE2 and 3 on PS4 would often dip into the 40s if I recall. Monster Hunter World and Stories 2 were other examples. At least give the option to cap at 30.
After these worrying news about performance, I think I will choose Rise of the Ronin first, and a few months and patches later, I will get Dragon's Dogma 2.
Honestly I'll probably grab it for PC then cause there I can lock it at 30fps
A locked 30fps is imo way better than an inconsistent 30-60fps (especially since my TV doesn't support VRR)
Personally, I just think that the uncapped frame rate is lame. I noticed how choppy it looked in the videos I’d seen.
Also, I think it’s fair to say we should expect 60fps now. What I don’t know about tech can fill a warehouse, but game graphics haven’t exactly jumped up a lot and it’s not like anyone is actually pushing 4K anymore, it’s all upsampled.
I was hoping this would at least hit 40fps for 120hz TVs, but I still stand by my opinion that 30fps is totally fine for 3rd person games, as long as it's stable. If it's hiccupping all over the place, though, that paints a different story. Hopefully, they clean it up a little more by release, but I'll probably be getting it regardless. Just looks like too much fun.
Digital Foundry's view is all i care about.
I prefer 60fps, but if they can't reach it, at least lock it at 30fps. Uncapped with dips in framerate looks absolutely horrendous.
The uncapped framerate averaging 31fps is a deal breaker for me, and I own a VRR TV. That sort of no man's land framerate is awful to play and looks horrific
Consistency is king and they need to offer a properly frame paced 30fps cap or I won't bother wasting my time on such a technical mess and I loved the original and the Dark Arisen dlc.
I am not rewarding them for their incompetence and would prefer to send the dev and publisher a clear message that this kind of framerate is unacceptable.
It's more likely that most of them have no idea what the framerate is, nor have the measuring tools to do so and are just guessing
@DonJorginho well said. Ps5 pro is not needed right now, what’s needed is devs to stop screwing around with optimization. It would also help to go the square Enix route and release demos for everything, since that’s proven to be lucrative in terms of feedback as well as sales generation. For whatever reason, games are regularly reeking of poor optimization. If it was small studios, sure I get it, but Capcom is obviously not small. Time will tell and it’s still a day one buy for me because I’m not too hooked on fps, Pokémon scarlet was the one that really drove me crazy and nothing else has since.
Maybe the uncapped framerate is because of the PS5 Pro's existence with PS5 and Series X|S suffering a less stable experience as a result like what happened around the time of XB1X and PS4 Pro?
@TrickyDicky99 it isn’t needed, better optimisation is needed. Horizon forbidden west is arguably a better looking open world game on ps5 and can maintain a solid 30fps, 40fps and 60fps depending on your preference.
Giving developers more power so they can perform worse optimisations isn’t a solution. A 4090 has roughly ten times the raw compute power of a ps5, and yet has still struggled to maintain 60fps on some of the worst optimised titles.
There’s also no guarantee that a ps5 pro version of this game would run any better. DD2 has rtx on pc so it’s quite likely the pro version of the game would have some form of ray tracing over the base version. The devs could also choose to render the game at a higher resolution than the base version, both of which would cause large hits to performance. History has shown that devs tend to prioritise visuals over frames on consoles as they’re easier to market than the latter.
A more powerful console wouldn’t guarantee a better performing game.
@Pranwell @Stickleman
Thanks. I guess. Think it’s just that I’ve been gaming for nearly 40 years and have gotten used to a huge range of different performance levels over that time. 30fps I imagine just needs slightly different timings due to extra lag (although compared to any hit delays caused by animations etc I would consider it a relatively minimal addition). I can happily get the timing for games at any frame rate, with the only problem for me being hitching caused by inconsistent frames or sudden drops. The only reason I usually pick 60fps is that I do see a noticeable additional blur in some games at a lower frame rate, specifically when paning the camera. That drives me nuts.
A stable 30fps would be much more welcome than some stuttering variable nonsense.
And is 30fps really that bad? Did our eyes bleed in the PS1 to PS3 generations?
I agree 60fps would be better but not if the graphics suffer too much. It's also a bit odd that the PS4 Pro could chuck around 4K(ish) visuals at 30fps and the PS5 can't do better?
I was under the impression that you can choose either 30 FPS locked or unlocked. Is that not the case? Because obviously unlocked is going to look at lot worse if your TV doesn’t have VRR to smooth things out.
@Pranwell it does help. No offense to people that this is a deal breaker for but the ones you should feel for is them. They'll be the ones unable to enjoy what is getting glowing praise and already being considered a goty contender
I could see myself buying this day 1 to just support the title and waiting for it to be patched.
@sanderson72 Well Dragons Dogma 2 would melt the PS4 Pro.
It's not an issue for me. I'd love 60fps but 30fps is not a deal breaker. Dark arisen,drive club,Gotham knights and god knows how many other great games I've played over the ps4/ps5 have been 30fps and I've not been that bothered as I get used to it. If a game has a performance mode that runs at 60fps of course I'll use it but just recently I've been trying games out in 4k@30fps and it's not as jarring as I originally thought. Personally I can't wait for this game to drop.
@TrickyDicky99 it’s arguably a better looking game than a “current gen” dragons dogma 2. The dlc for forbidden west, burning shores, was ps5 only. But if you want to be pedantic, fine. Miles morales, returnal, spiderman 2, helldivers 2 all launching with solid 60fps options on a console which you say is crying out for a pro model. Objectively, you’re wrong. Sorry.
Optimisation is the issue.
@TrickyDicky99 Horizon looks better, Demon Souls looked better and ran at 60 FPS. This game doesn't look so great either so what's the issue here
@sanderson72 But I rather play 1080P at 60FPS then 4K at 30 FPS though.
@Neither_scene Demon Souls was a beautiful and ran fantastic and it was a launch title which makes it even worse. 😢
@Northern_munkey
>Gotham knights
>great game
What?
30fps+no coop+L+ratio
Y'all are gonna be seeing 30fps more and more as more software targeting current gen only releases.
@Ralizah
What else should it be targeting?
@ZhuckelDror Who said it should be targeting anything else?
Though it’s always desirable, my need for 60fps generally depends on the type of game for me. Dragon’s Dogma 2 looks fantastic either way.
@ZhuckelDror Gotham knights is a great,fun game. Is it perfect or better than the arkham series? No. I really enjoyed my time with Gotham knights.
Such a shame if they can’t make it 60fps. Love love love this series but I just can’t play on 30fps any more for an action game.
I can play a locked 30fps but I can't tolerate a unstable frame rate/pacing. It hurts my eyes. I won't be buying this until they have the decency like 95% of developers to add a capped framerate option.
@TrickyDicky99 my mistake, I was confusing demons souls with miles morales. Which launched with a solid 60fps and looked great.
If you think a ps5 pro is going to magically transform every game running at 30fps on base ps5 to 60fps, you’re going to be extremely disappointed. A pro version of ps5, will be very similar to the ps4 pro in terms of upgraded capabilities: It will smooth out frame rates with games that have performance modes and will likely target higher native resolutions, possibly with the addition of some extra graphical features like ray tracing. I wouldn’t be surprised if some games have checkerboarded 8k modes seeing as Sony have 8k TV’s to sell. Pointless imo, but plausible given that the ps4 pro was used to help Sony market 4k.
Could not care less about frame rates. If its a good game play it.
@SgtTruth I experienced the need for VRR when Elden Ring suddenly became unplayable due to screen tearing. I found out that my TV bugged and was no longer finding the PS5 to activate the game mode with VRR. After TV hard reboot, everything went fine again. But yeah, I agree that a fixed FPS at 30, 40 or 60 should be industry standard.
Starfield, Tears of the Kingdom (among others) did fine and got plenty of praise without people losing their minds about 30fps. It still seems a double standard to me.
@TrickyDicky99 It's nothing to do with the PS5 capabilities...
Oh how I wish I was back in the days of the original Playstation when we didn't have people crying constantly about graphics and FPS and they actually just played a game to enjoy it.
If it's uncapped, surely we can set PS5 output to 1440p, via settings and we'll get more fps? Digital Foundry will know, otherwise, as others have said, I'll get Rise of the Ronin.
It's quite surprising as RE Engine is very light for the quality of the output, always was.
@jt887 Are you quite sure? The framerate is unlocked, so whats to stop it running higher if it's using less resources? Look at Dark Souls 3, which was unlocked and ran at higher FPS with no patch on PS4 pro.
@TrickyDicky99 ps5 pro would soon fall into same pattern...
The PS5 can be set at hardware level to render at 1440p though, via settings menu. You could well be correct though.
I can’t even tell the difference between 30 and 60 FPS. My tv can definitely handle it (LG CX) but I tend to use graphics/resolution mode. This is a me problem for sure 😂😂 it surely doesn’t help that I’m technology incompetent.
I hope for the people who use performance mode that it stabilizes in time for them to enjoy 60 FPS
@guestwork Nope. Just sloppy development. Ratchet and Clank looks better than this.
Just give us the choice or a slider or something FFS.
@awp69
Unfortunately VRR won’t even help this game on PS5. PS5’s VRR range is 48-120fps so from the sound of it, it won’t even hit that minimum number. If it does hit that number, it’ll be extremely rare and will feel even worse because it’ll be switching VRR on and off at random times.
Unfortunately seems like it’ll have to be a PS5 Pro game or played next gen. So disappointing. A simple 30fps cap would fix all of this for now.
Devs need to start giving console owners more graphics options to tweak if they have the desire to do so. Give us shadow resolution, volumetric cloud/lighting, anti aliasing, and render resolution options. Give us the ability to change the most intensive options so we can play as we see fit.
I don’t want to game on PC and prefer the ease of the console experience, but I would really like to have options so I don’t have to play a game with an uncapped frame rate averaging at 31fps in the year 2024. This is completely unacceptable.
@Utterlynobody poor performance can make a good game bad.
For a lot of people it is an accessibility issue just like color blindness or excessive motion blur/chromatic aberration that makes you dizzy/nauseous.
An erratic frame rate can make a game unplayable for many people, so it’s great that it’s not a problem for you, but it is a large problem for many, many people.
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